I heartily recommend De Cecco. I've become someone who looks at pasta brands recently. My life went wrong somewhere.

On the recipe front, southern Iranian cooking with tamarind, fenugreek, coriander leaf and lots of chili is something I've 'got into' recently. If anyone ever has cause to go to west London, Sufi restaurant near Shepherd's Bush is exceptionally good.

OK, so to make a change from all this heavy politics bollocks, here's my recipe for beef'n'bacon burgers. Although I say it myself, they are the fucking BOMB.

1) Ingredients: easily scalable to any quantity, but for six roughly quarter-pounders, say 400 g of good minced beef, 200 g of smoked streaky bacon, one big onion, an egg for binding, several garlic cloves. For further flavouring, add some chopped herbs, ideally fresh but dried is fine too (basil, oregano and thyme are ideal; we had some coriander lying around so that went in, which is a bit unusual but actually worked pretty well); finely chopped chili or chili flakes; paprika; black pepper; a good dessert spoon of Marmite for bonus meatiness.

Cut the bacon into roughly 1 cm pieces, chop the onion until you're bored of it or can't see any more (the finer the better, really) and crush/chop/mince the garlic. Then just sort of smoosh it all together until thoroughly mixed.

Form into six or so burger and sprinkle well with flour, which helps them maintain integrity during cooking. I put a bit more flour on after taking the photo above. A dash of Worcestershire sauce is good at this point (don't drench them).

And here's a couple served with new spuds and slathered in Roquefort, because - by definition - you can't do excess by halves.

I slightly fucked up with the wine because the only bottle of red we had in the house (for shame!) was quite light and fruity, whereas what this really demands is a shiraz that's punchier than Muhammad Ali, especially if you're going to be barbecueing them. Lesson learned for next time!

had my first experience with koshary (also spelled koshari and kushari), Egyptian street food with rice and lentil base, a little bit of macaroni (or other small pasta) and chick peas mixed in, topped with a bit of tomato sauce and fried onions. usually also comes with a dakka sauce on the side but the one I have was too spicy for my tastes, the spiciness of the tomato sauce was enough.

Sea salt
Black pepper
Garlic granules
Smoked paprika
Dried, powdered tube material from penny buns/ceps/porcini or similar mushrooms (AFAIK I'm the only person in the world who uses this as an ingredient in its own right - you will basically have to pick them fresh and dry them at home to obtain it)

Slap it on your meat before frying. I've got a couple of chunks of sirloin cooking sous-vide right now